The Sui Dynasty [Hardcover]

Arthur Wright (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 237 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (December 12, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394492765
• ISBN-13: 978-0394492766
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #859,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Events many years past but somehow contemporary, January 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sui Dynasty (Hardcover)

How does one unify a nation and a culture? At what point do ambitious plans grow beyond a government's capacity overwhelm their authors? Is there a fundamental difference between the drive and discipline which lifts spirits and fosters achievement, and the arrogance and brutality which engender rebellion?

Wright takes up these eternal questions in a meditation on the short-lived Sui dynasty, predecessor and layer of cultural and institutional foundations for the more famous Tang. Its founder unified China for the first time in 400 years; his successor, aiming to transcend this accomplishment with public works and foreign wars, brought down the dynasty. An old work and hard to find, but one which offers some illumination on the problems of contemporary China as well as on a time long past.